Snippets of our Week (for our 5-yr-old)

I've been meaning to put up a post about what we generally work on from day to day. But, with blogger not working for a while, I have a plethora of photos to share. So, here's a glimpse of what DD (just turned 5) has been working on these past couple of weeks.  Her "basics" include math, reading, handwriting, music/glockenspiel, arts&crafts and another unit-study (a lapbook in this case, but we usually have some sort of science/history/child-led unit occurring. Usually this is something we're working on together as a family.)

I called this pumkin bingo.  I made a die with 3-digit numbers on them.  Each pumpkin has one of those numbers.  We take turns rolling the die and covering our pumpkin if it has the corresponding number. To go along with that we've been building those 3 digit numbers using Montessori type number cards that we have from our Right Start Math curriculum (pictured below).

DD has been moving along quickly with her writing. I decided to purchase this writing, penmanship book from currclick called I Like Animals.  It is a bit pricey (I bought a bundle, which lowered the price a bit), but I have to say that DD LOVES this.  Yes, LOVES it!  She is zooming through it and works hard to get to the mazes.  So in that regard I can highly recommend it.  I printed it out on both sides of the paper and bound it together to look like a proper book.

DD practices the glockenspiel every day and now know about four pieces.  She won't allow Mom to help at all! In this photo she is playing Hot Cross Buns.

DD wanted to do a lapbook and chose to learn about butterflies and insects.  We took that opportunity to go through our classification cards.  We started with the living and non-living sort with free Montessori cards I downloaded from here.

Another day we used those same Montessori cards to sort the "living" cards into the five kingdoms. (http://homemademontessori.blogspot.com/search/label/5%20kingdom) Sorry about the blurry photo.

We still enjoy lots of time in the woods!

Anyway, continuing on with our animal classification review... a few days later we pulled out the vertebrate and invertebrate cards (which again were free.  Thank you homemade Montessori!)  This was really useful because DD's lapbook delved into the differences among the various invertebrate groups and had some good mini-books that complemented these sorting activities.  I'll put up a separate post about her butterfly/insect lapbook.

DD has been learning to recognize the written numbers, so this activity from filefolder fun has been just great!

This is an activity I got from Montessori Print Shop at some point.  I think it might have been one of their free downloads. It has a close up picture of certain items and then a view of the object from farther away.  It was just a quick 5 minute activity, but it intrigued ED who also gave it a go. (You can see her pink foot in the picture... she's often trying to interfere when she feels left out. My main recourse at the moment, is to have her workboxes filled with activities I can pull out for her at a moments' notice such as a puzzle, sorting, a new coloring sheet or things like that. Now that I write that, it occurs to me that I should pull out some activity bags for her once again.)

DD reads through two or three readers each day (for a total of about 15 minutes of reading or so).

DD has been very, very proud of her lapbook.  Here she's showing off her latest additions to Dad.  I'll write a separate post about her lapbook soon.

We continue to have music class with some friends each week.  DD's music class is focusing on world music.  This week we learned a bit about about the music of Bali in Indonesia. We watched a short video of a shadow puppet show on YouTube. Then each child used actual shadow puppets that Grams passed on to us to act out their own short skit.

We had the gamelan music from someone's trip to Bali on in the background as each person got a chance to put on a performance with the shadow puppets.

In the beginning of our music class, we always sing a few songs together. The kids have loved the crazy motion song "My Aunt Came Back" Each week we identify where Japan, Algeria, Mali (Timbuktu), Holland and Niagra Falls are located on the world map.  The kids always laugh as each verse adds a new motion (a hand fan, sheers, wooden shoe, chewing gum, a ping pong ball, rocking chair etc.)

Here we are all playing "Go to the Dump."  We take turns turning over two cards. The object is to find two cards that equal 10 (10 and 0, 9 and 1, 8 and 2 etc.)

This ladybird math activity goes along perfectly with Go To The Dump.  It's from Early Learning HQ.

So that's it for DD at the moment. I'm planning to do a similar post for LD (age 7) and ED (age 2 1/2) in the next day or so. Oh yes, and also will share DD's lapbook. She's very proud of it!